


a love with no place to go

by kingwellsjaha



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, going down a bad memory lane, it's actually not as angsty as i thought it would be but still, jossamweek 2017, sam is basically reliving her summer of 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 16:31:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12511556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingwellsjaha/pseuds/kingwellsjaha
Summary: In her room, her mobile phone starts to ring. It's in her baggy pants pressing against her leg. The vibrations startle her as does the ringtone. It's a specific ringtone. She never uses special ringtones, but there is, was one exception.Sam breaths in slowly. At the time she had used the ring tone, her goal had been to answer these calls as quickly as possible, but now she is stopping herself.aka it's 2017 and Sam is dissociating in a stranger's bathroom, revisiting her 2014 bedroom and Josh.





	a love with no place to go

**Author's Note:**

> well,  
> i knew i would write for them again. somehow i keep coming back and what better than the jossamweek to do so! this time for day 2 ghostly encounters.
> 
> does this story really count as a ghostly encounter? idk, probably not, but i had this idea and it took me to this place.  
> i'm not entirely happy with it, particularly with the ending, but i wrote it in about 4 hours so i should cut myself some slack.
> 
> trigger warning: while i haven't used the non con/rape tag because it does not apply, there is a situation where josh, at that point the masked man, and sam are fighting on a bed, nothing bad happens though
> 
> ik btw that dissocation does not lead to heavy illusions. i based it on my experience with traumatic events, which mostly cause me to relive the moment

“and the smell of the past is everywhere,  
[...]  
the smell of too many illusions-”  
\- [Louise Glück, “Sunrise” A Village of Life](http://metaphorformetaphor.tumblr.com/post/155561987410/and-the-smell-of-the-past-is-everywhere-the)

It's 2017, a Halloween party at someone’s friend friend house and Sam is about to dissociate so hard that her soul will not only leave her body, but also this realm of existence.

While she is trying to stop it, she's on her way to the bathroom to splash fresh water onto her face and arms to remind her that she's still in fact at this party, she also knows that it's already too late to stop the process. She can try and tell herself that she’s at Angela’s friend’s friend house, Angela from psych class, a nice unassuming girl, Sam doesn't particularly mind, but she had promised Dr. Greenwich to connect more to her peers and that's why she chose the most harmless looking one, but it won’t work.

Some part of her is very aware that she’s at a bright lit orange-black stale Halloween party, but as she opens the door of the bathroom, it feels more like her old room back at her mom’s place. A room that doesn't exist like this anymore and is now used as a guest room and more often, because it is her mom, a storage space.

It's a 2014 relict, and as her eyes move through it, she is surprised how much she has forgotten of it. Like the pictures of Hannah and her that she had not been able to put down after the first incident or the homework all over the table because she had tried so hard to get good grades for possible scholarships. She stares at this now gone space for a while and then has enough sense to lock the door behind her. It's dark in her room. Her eyes move to the bathroom mirror, which is incorporated into her bedroom as her window. She stares at her reflection, trying to ground herself back into reality.

It's the 2017 face, she’s looking at. The face of a somewhat tired young woman, who had not slept in a while and also tried to make an impromptu vampire costume that by the looks on her face failed spectacularly. Most of the make up has rubbed of. It looks more like she has slept in it. She stares at the face and tries to remember her morning jogging route like Dr. Greenwich has told her. If she feels out of focus, she needs to find something to bring her back.

First she runs from her campus dorm to the plaza and then right into the park. In her mind she can see the green leaves. Someone is walking their dog.

Good, continue.

The park has four main routes, she mostly chooses the one next to the pond, which ends at a small tea house. There she turns. At 6 am the tea house is still closed though people are already busy inside. To her knowledge, it opens at 8 am and has vegan options that she knows for sure. She has been there with her dad on his annual visit 2016.

In her room her mobile phone starts to ring. It's in her baggy pants pressing against her leg. The vibrations startle her as does the ringtone. It's a specific ringtone. She never uses special ringtones, but there is, was one exception.

The ringtone is one of the other twenty generic ringtones her mobile phone has. It is a snazzy quick number, something which makes you wake up with its first note. It’s annoying, repetitive and ugly sounding.

Sam breaths in slowly. At the time she had used the ring tone, her goal had been to answer these calls as quickly as possible, but now she is stopping herself.

Dr. Greenwich and she have discussed it briefly before, though not for this specific situation. Sam never talks about Josh, she rather likes to go back to the monsters than discuss him.

Greenwich’s advice is fairly easy to follow:

  1. Try and go somewhere safe
  2. Use cold water to ground yourself
  3. Stay calm
  4. Get help
  5. Don’t give in.



She repeats the words.

 _Don't give in_. She looks at herself in the window sees the old Sam.

The vibration on her leg grows stronger.

 _Don't give in, don't answer_. That’s not even advice for now. It’s advice for the 2014 Sam as well. The Sam that had tried to fix everything. Oh, such a stupid, stupid girl. She shouldn’t answer. In her mind she can recall how this conversation used to go.

Her, slightly unsure and worried: _Hey_

Him, drunk, slurring his words: _Heyyyyyy Sammyyy_

 _Are you okay?_ , she then asks like a formula. She hates that she does so every time. Of course he isn't and she knows why. She does not have to ask, why is she so formal about this? But it feels like something safe to ask.

_Just fineeeee._

Silence.

 _Yo Sammy_.

She can hear his voice clear in her head, a sound she has tried to forget, that she has tried to avoid. Unlike her, he cuts to the chase. He has drunken enough to do so now. Sober he would’ve made four bad jokes and recited a whole Futurama episode.

_Can I come over?_

The words hang in the air between them, they are heavy with suggestions. _I am lonely, I am scared. I need your help. I need you. I need to fuck you. I need to…_

The phone keeps ringing. Sam notes that she should’ve used mascara and that the lipstick she used to imitate blood is slightly pinkish. She needs to distract herself, her mind goes back to the jogging routine.

Right, the teahouse, her father, it had been a bad idea to bring her father there. He tends to taint all places he has been with her, so now she dislikes the teahouse a little bit, but she will eventually get over it. She’s sure of that.

At the teahouse she turns and goes right, which is known as the “weed route”, but at 6 am it is just comfortably quiet. Only the buds and blunts, littered over the grass, were annoying. Sam always wonders at that point always why people do that. It's not that hard to put it in a bin or take it with you. She always ends up with the same conclusion: People simply don't seem to care.

A knock at the door makes her jump, she stares blankly at her white door where her jackets and backpacks hang. Another knock. In the silence she notes that the phone has stopped ringing. The voice behind the door explains why.

“Saaaammmmmy”

Another knock.

“C’mon”

She stops breathing and slightly moves backwards.

“I know you’re in there”

Her hands are shaking. She has both, stopped to breathe and is breathing heavily.

Another step back.

On the other side, he is groaning annoyed like a child that doesn't understand why he cannot play with his favorite toy. She is not sure why she pictures him like that. Josh has never been like that. Well, till the second incident.

“ **C’mon Samantha let me in**.”

The voice is distorted now. It's the masked man talking. She still keeps them apart in her mind. It’s two things, Josh and the masked man. If she puts them together, she is afraid to destroy the last good memory that she has.

“ **Or do you wanna play hide and seek? Cheeky!** ”

His voice breaks and it sounds like Josh, just Josh. She shakes her head and moves backwards. Her legs hit the bed. Panic rises up her throat ready to spill out like bile.

She’s trapped. She’s trapped. There is no way out.

“ **Let’s do it, I’ll count to ten.** ”

With shaking feet she sits down, pressing herself against the cool surface of the tub behind her. Her mind is racing repeating the same sentence all over again. Don’t give in, don’t give in!

“ **1** ”

She makes herself as small as she can, resting her head on her knees, closing her eyes.

“ **2** ”

She puts her hands over her ears, trying to keep him out.

“ **3** ”

His voice can still be heard through. She presses her hands harder over her ears. In her mind she desperately wants to move back to her jogging route.

“ **4** ”

To escape the masked man, she first throws a vase at him. That distracts him long enough to run to the door to the right.

“ **5** ”

Behind the door she usually jumps over the bed and moves further towards the stairs down to the cellar because it’s the only way she can see and this is a big house. Down there might be a way out. Josh has talked about something like that ones.

“ **6** ”

If she is honest, she only runs down because in her haste she does not know where to go else. She almost falls at the stairs. The corridor, she and Josh had occupied hours ago, seems less homely. Her first instinct is to hide, but he would know that, wouldn’t he. So she runs to the next door she sees, only to realize that it misses the door knob.

“ **7** ”

She can feel him behind her. She can hear him breathe. He is close and he will come closer. Her mind is racing at that point. Where to go where to go, but she cannot give up. Not know, her eyes find the missing knobs and she sprints for her life.

“ **8** ”

It’s a miracle that she gets it in time, but she does, and she opens the door in time, and she closes it and the small window in it too. And then she continues to run as far away as possible.

“ **9** ”

The network down the the mansion is complicated and she hurts herself just simply running. At some point she does not hear him anymore. Carefully she stops breathes in just for a moment, just so that she can hide. She sits down and waits, waits for it to be over.

“ **10** ”

In the summer of 2014, Josh had usually called her as soon as he had been close. One time he had thrown a stone at her window, which had left a mark that could be seen till today, after that he never did it again. She then had put on her house shoes and had sneaked down the stairs, careful not to wake her mother. At the door she had met him, grinning down at her.

 _Hallu_ , then a hug, sometimes already a kiss, but not usually. Carefully she had guided him upstairs past her mother’s bedroom, till they finally were in the safety of her bedroom, where he had sat down on the bed. She reminded him to please take of his coat and shoes. It was peaceful moment no matter how sad, no matter how lost they both had felt. Just a friend coming by to another friend. Just a boyfriend getting into the room of his girlfriend in secret at night, but Sam never dared to think that far.

“Your room is always so tidy, do you clean it before I come?”

The voice is close and soft. Sam forgets her fear and slowly opens her eyes. The first thing she sees are his Pokemon socks, then his dirty jeans and green shirt. Her heart stops, the moment she looks up and sees Josh’s face, who looks at her all so innocently, sitting there on her bed.  Her eyes quickly move away unable to comprehend who is sitting there next to her. Slowly she looks at the room herself, examines it. Everything is silent, the door looks unassuming, clearly no monster behind it. It's quiet.

She breathes out smiling. Her arms slowly let go of her head. Her eyes move back to Josh, go over his profile. It's been a long time since she has seen him like this. In her mind she never dares to imagine him ever, to paint him, when she has to think about him, she leaves his appearance blank, nothing but an empty shadow.

His eyes are slightly red from weed, his hair a little long for him and oh so curly and she can see that he hasn’t shaven in a few days, but he is beautiful. She forgets this fact deliberately and it hits her again every time.

“Not really,” she states softly, almost close to tears. She quickly looks away, cannot bear to look longer.

Josh chuckles, and it’s comforting and warm. She wants to replay that sound endlessly.

“Shocker.” Alcohol at that stage always has the tendency to make Josh both blunt in his actions, but also without words.

“What did your mother say again, you came out of her womb as a 45 year old?”

Sam rolls her eyes. Her mother has told that tale so many times too all of her friends. It's getting annoying at that point.

“Yeah, I have to balance out your constant 5 year old.”

It's easier to find good counters if you are the not-drunk one. Sam feels slightly proud. Josh gives her a side eye.

“You're not doing a good job at that.”

“Well, you are a really really horrible 5 year old,” Josh smiles, ”who drinks too much most of the time.”

“I know.” Josh puts his hand onto her shoulder, “I’m sorry.”

They look at each other. His blue eyes reflecting in her green ones. Sam isn’t sure what she is feeling at that moment. It comes close to happiness, the memory of happiness layered under grief. She lays her head onto his hand.

“You don't have to be. It is not your fault.”

No answer to that, she knows now that he believes that it is his fault, and soon it will turn into  theirs and then it's hers. She can read the sadness in his face, understands it better now. In this moment she feels less afraid than she did back in 2014.

“You just need help,” she grabs his hand and kisses it slightly, “we all do. You just need to give into the help and grief and everything is going to be alright. Believe me.”

Josh looks at her and she believes that he will break. She can see him breaking down, crying in her arms. He will cry till the morning and comes. It won’t be better then, but they will move on. They can continue. Nothing has to happen the way it does.

But this is not 2014, she cannot undo what has happened, and the Josh in 2014 never listened.

He just moves down to kiss her. His hands move from her shoulder to her head. This Josh simply wants to fill the emptiness in his heart. He just wants sex, he just wants someone to use, and Sam is willing to be that person.

So she gives into the kiss, even though he tastes like alcohol and cigarettes, like he had barely eaten anything today. Even though his tongue is sloppy and his other hand moves too quickly to her breast, she moves closer gets up from her position on the floor.

He pulls her up onto the bed, dragging her under him, while their mouths and and hands do the rest. Sam is surprised how much she still remembers his touch. How she misses it, misses it even more now that she can feel it again. His hands feel rough on her breasts. Their noses bump sometimes. They are not particularly skilled lovers that needs experience and the ability to talk to each other, but her heart skips a beat still.

Sam puts her hand in his hair and relinquishes the feeling of it.

She lets him undress her. He takes some time with her bra and she giggles at that, impressed at what her mind is constructing in detail.

His eyes skim over her body, her breasts. Can he see her? Or does he only notices breasts, does he only notices her stomach and vulva? Sometimes she felt that he had seen them as something apart from her like a machine, bound to make him happy.

As he goes down on her, she stops thinking, just closing her eyes. Their sex never was mind blowing, but Sam always felt that he knew what to do with his tongue. No one came ever close to that feeling.

She does not know what it is. She’s in college now, she had experienced lovers, enthusiastic ones, but it never comes close to this. Maybe it’s about this feeling of being alive, which heightened the experience. It has gone missing. It has disappeared and she still has not managed to regain it. Greenwich is hopeful, he’s very hopeful that Sam will become herself some day or that she will be happy. Sam wonders if this is possible. If she is doomed like this. Like they all are doomed, all of them. The survivors of the first and second incident, but maybe she is more doomed than the others, more intertwined. After all, she was the one being chased down the corridor for his amusement.

He puts a hand on her stomach and it feels weird like rubber.

She opens her eyes to see a mask staring back at her. A scream leaves her mouth as she starts to struggle, but he’s stronger than her, pushing her down getting on top of her. His body suffocates her and she can not do anything against it. She continues to scream, to fight. Her hands grab the mask as she tries to pull it away, tries to get the masked man out of her vision. He screams distorted screams as well. The masks feels glued to his body. She yells again and kicks.

“ **SAM** ”

His hands grab her shoulders shaking her. She screams louder. His grip is so strong it hurts. The force on his mask should tear his head apart by now.

“Sam!”

She’s prepared to bite him by now, to bite his nose off. Everything just to free her. He shakes her again more roughly. Her head slams against the bathtub. It’s a blinding pain. The kind of pain that makes you feel like you are going to vomit. She closes her eyes, giving up to free herself.

“Oh shit.” The hands ease their grip as she stops fighting against it. The voice sounds different now, familiar, but it’s not Josh. After the pain faints away, she slowly opens her eyes again.

The bright light of the bathroom is almost blinding her. Her eyes meet familiar blue eyes who appear far bigger hiding behind glasses. Suddenly she realizes why the voice was so familiar.

“Chris.” Her voice is weak and sounds like she’s crying. As she lets go of his arms to touch her wet cheeks, her arms are shaking. Chris continues to look at her, not sure if she really is okay.

He looks scared and worried, a familiar look on him. It’s silent as Sam tries to process all of it. She’s sitting pressed against the bathtub. Water is flowing out of the faucet, she can see it over Chris’ shoulders. So she has tried to calm herself down. Yes her arms are cold and wet. The sleeves of her dress soaked.

She breathes out and turns her look to Chris, who carefully raises his arms from her, making sure that she’s not moving during the process. Sam’s eyes move to the door. It has been opened, and people are standing outside watching them. She’s too tired to make out their faces, but she can hear them whispering. Chris notices her look and turns around too.

“Do you mind?,” he asks annoyed before getting up and closing the door in front of them. He stays there for a moment before turning the faucet off, and then sitting down next to her. He grabs the hand towel and give it to her.

“Think you need it.”

Thankfully she takes it and rubs of her face and arms. They are silent both staring at the door. Sam still has not fully comprehended what happened, finally it hits her.

“You’re here.” The actual sentence she had wanted to say, had been ‘Why are you here?’, but questions are a bit much right now.

“You wrote some very concerning text messages, and Ashley and I thought, it was necessary to check on you.”

She wonders for a moment how he got the address, but then she remembers that she had given him about a week ago, just in case.

“Oh my god,” she puts her hands to her head. It’s a first display in emotions and is already too much. “Don’t tell me you drove all 20 miles down here.”

“I did.”

“God,” Sam wants to punch herself finally the amplitude of her actions hit her, “I’m _so_ sorry.”

“It's alright.” That's a very Chris thing to say and the way he does it gives Sam the feeling that it's really ‘alright’. Still Sam starts to cry again, really crying, ugly crying. Even though she is tired she still manages to do it for a while.

Chris puts an arm around her and lets it happen. She leans her head against his chest and his slow beating heart calms her. She cannot explain to him what happened. She can barely fathom it herself, but it’s Chris. He doesn’t ask her any questions. Probably because he couldn’t bear the truth.

She never has told him about Josh, but maybe he knows, maybe Josh told him. Maybe he just put one and one together. Someday she will tell him, she’s sure about them, later when everything is fine, and he will laugh and tell that he already knew, dummy!

She likes that idea, she wants to be already there. Not here on the floor of a stranger’s bathroom crying because she has lost all her words, because she just saw her dead not-boyfriend and it felt so life like.

Finally she sighs and stops. Someday Josh will be a memory she can live with, a ghost she can bear to remember, she thinks herself. She desperately hopes it.

**Author's Note:**

> yell your thoughts at me! and maybe an idea for a better ending.


End file.
